Airport Owners Ground Radio Tower Proposal

December 04, 1986|By William Presecky.

A proposal by an Aurora radio station to erect a 466-foot transmitting tower in Downers Grove Township failed to get off the ground after residents of an exclusive fly-in community next-door protested that the antenna would make landings on their private strip too dangerous.

Faced with a storm of protest from more than 200 residents of the Brookeridge area, south of Downers Grove, the owner of the station withdrew its petition for the zoning permit it needed to build a tower an

unincorporated area on Dunham Road, just north of Plainfield Road. About 100 aircraft are based at Brookeridge.

The broadcast company reportedly has another site in the area where it is considering placing its new antenna, according to attorney Douglas Slansky, of Downers Grove, who represented Midwest Broadcasting of Chicago Inc., the radio station owner.

``I think they saw the handwriting on the wall,`` said Joseph Abel, secretary of the Du Page Zoning Board of Appeals.

Slansky said the broacast company officials agreed with Brookeridge residents that the proposed tower site would be a hazard to their airport operation.

The zoning board was to have decided Thursday whether to recommend approval of a special-use permit and a zoning variance to allow for construction of the radio tower in an area zoned for large-lot, single-family development.

Nick Dispensa, president of Brookeridge Aero Associates, the 26-member group that owns the private airport, said he was prepared to argue at Monday`s zoning hearing that approval of a permit to allow radio station WAUR-FM to build an antenna on land northwest of the airport would jeopardize traffic movements at the 30-year-old landing strip.

Slansky withdrew the zoning petition, but said he would return seeking permission for the zoning needed to locate the tower on another unincoporated site, Abel said.

Brookeridge Airport, near Darien, was a privately owned landing strip when it was purchased in the mid-1960s and developed as a fly-in subdivision. Residents of Brookeridge are able to taxi their aircraft out of their back yards and fly in and out of the subdivision.

Dispensa said the location of the proposed tower, which Midwest Broadcasting wanted to build in order to enhance the signal of WAUR-FM in the Chicago market, was an impediment to standard left-hand turning maneuvers that pilots using Brookeridge need to make when landing on its four runways.